It is a well-known drawback of most motor vehicles, particularly family saloon cars, that there is no convenient place for supporting drinks so that a motorist or a passenger wishing to drink during a journey must himself hold the drink or, alternatively, make use of a bottle with a screw top which can be replaced and put aside when not in use. This, of course, is inconvenient so far as passengers are concerned and is positively dangerous as far as the motorist is concerned.
The above-mentioned drawback is overcome in more expensive saloon cars by the provision of a suitable drink container holder, which is typically provided as an integral feature of the car itself. To this extent, it cannot be removed and is normally fixed to the dashboard of the vehicle, from which it projects.
Such an arrangement is not particularly convenient for several reasons. First, its location is determined by the manufacturer of the motor vehicle and may not always be ideal from the user's point of view. Second, space is always at a premium inside a motor vehicle and, consequently, the fact that the drink container holder permanently projects from the dashboard makes it difficult for the motorist or a passenger to move across from one side of the vehicle to the other, which can be irritating. To overcome this problem, some expensive cars have a drink container holder built-in to the dashboard so that it may be retracted therefrom when required. However, this is a highly customized solution to the problem which is not capable of general application and further increases the cost of the device.
Possibly this accounts for the fact that, to date, drink container holders in family saloon cars tend to be provided only on the more luxurious, and therefore bigger, cars where rather more space is available. On the other hand, it may also account for the fact that even though such drink container holders have been proposed in the patent literature since the early part of the century, the market-place testifies that they have been far from successful, their market being limited, as explained, to relatively large, luxury cars. In short, in spite of the vast effort which apparently has been expended in trying to provide a universally acceptable drink container holder for a motor vehicle, an acceptable solution to the problem remains outstanding.
Many of the drink container holders which have been proposed are theoretically based on the gyroscopic principle in an attempt to ensure that the top surface of a drink remains level even during sudden spurts of acceleration or deceleration of the vehicle. Thus, gimbal-type bearings are provided for supporting two mutually orthogonal axes of rotation, whereby effective rotation of the car itself about a third axis induces gyroscopic precession which theoretically stabilizes the liquid level in the drink container holder.
Thus, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,819,843 (Nakayama) discloses such a drink container holder comprising three members: a mounting base having a mounting device for mounting within a vehicle, a holding framework for holding a cup, and an intermediate, pivotable framework interposed between the mounting base and the holding framework. The three members are pivotably connected to one another through pivotable shaft bearing portions. The mounting device comprises a substantially inverted U-shaped bracket and the mounting base has dependent bearing portions integrally suspended therefrom. A substantially U-shaped bail member is provided upon the holding framework, and the mounting base, holding framework and intermediate framework are mutually pivotable about two orthogonal axes, such that the three members effectively define gimbal rings for supporting the drink container.
It should further be noted that such a device, and many of similar ilk, are intended to overcome the inherent drawback of making a drink container holder integral with the dashboard of the motor vehicle. Thus, the device proposed by Nakayama is not permanently fixed to the interior of the motor vehicle but, rather, is adapted to be suspended to an edge portion of the vehicle's door. Furthermore, assuming that an average sized cup or drink container is to be supported by the drinks holder, then, even when not in use, the device would project some 10 cm from the mounting surface with the attendant drawbacks described above.
Additionally, it might be mentioned that whilst, in theory, the provision of gimbal rings is an attractive feature of the device proposed by Nakayama, in practice for such a device to be effective in maintaining the stability of the liquid level, the bearings would have to be of such quality that the resulting cost of the drink container holder would represent a not insignificant proportion of the total cost of the vehicle itself. If, on the other hand, such quality is sacrificed and the friction of the bearings is thus not minimal, the device would not achieve its objective.
In any case, there are many situations when liquid spillage is not a primary concern. For example, canned drinks having a key-ring type opening, provide only a small aperture from which drink may escape and thus do not present a very serious spillage problem. Even were the Nakayama or similar devices to be used for supporting canned drinks, no particular regard being had for possible spillage of its contents, such devices still suffer from the drawbacks described in detail above. Specifically, the Nakayama device must be mounted on the door frame itself and is not amenable to mounting on the dashboard. Its location within the vehicle is therefore not subject to the user's choice. Furthermore, the Nakayama device is expensive, requiring, in effect, three separate rings, only one of which actually secures the side wall of the drink container. Most important of all, the Nakayama device is not collapsible and therefore, whether or not it is actually being used, it always projects its full depth (at least 10 cm) from its supporting surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,926,879 (Dietrich) discloses a tumbler holder not specifically intended for motor vehicles, comprising a horizontally-disposed ring having diametrically opposed holes, a horizontally-disposed U-shaped yoke, also having diametrically opposed holes aligned with those of the ring, the yoke being outside of the ring, and a U-shaped springy wire whose ends engage corresponding holes in the ring and adjoining yoke. In such an arrangement, the horizontally-disposed U-shaped yoke is removably coupled to a wall mount and the horizontally-disposed ring is capable of rotation into a vertical plane, parallel to the U-shaped springy wire when the device is not in use. However, it is clear that such a device is not intended for use in a vehicle on account of the fact that no provision is made for limiting the rotation of the horizontally-disposed ring, so that a tumbler supported therein would suffer from virtually undamped movement commensurate with every lurch of the vehicle. Even were such a device to be used for supporting canned drinks, such that the attendant risk of spillage is small, such unrestricted movement is, of course, highly undesirable.